247 comments on What are YOU Changing (*if anything), Individually, Locally, Nationally, etc?
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247 comments on What are YOU Changing (*if anything), Individually, Locally, Nationally, etc?
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I bought a Flex-fuel Car. My next step will be the "Still."
deleted double post
Is your comment intended in jest?
I lived in Brazil in the 1980's when 100% ethanol fuel powered vehicles were introduced there and I owned a few of them. At the time my father built a small still powered by LNG (which was readily available because it is commonly used for cooking) and we used local fruits to make a mash for distilling.
We did this on a very small scale mostly for the purpose of testing the concept. Based on that experience I find it highly doubtful that most people would be capable of producing their own ethanol for the purposes of fueling a lawnmower let alone sufficient fuel for their transportation needs.
In any case, I would suggest to others thinking about following such a path that they first build the still and produce some good schnapps. After drinking it with your friends you probably won't want to be putting it into your fuel tank...it would be a real waste.
As for what I myself am doing, I'm continuing to educate myself and am actively seeking like minded people in my local community to build my social network. It's all about the Butcher, the Baker and the Candle stick maker and maybe a CNC machinist or two. I'm also building a little test aquaponics systems so I'm learning about efficient pumps, ecosystems and biofiltration.
Cheers,
In a conversation with Julian Darley, he mentioned that his experiments with making ethanol were far from satisfactory, too. I didn't ask what the exact problems were, though. What did you find during your experimentation?
aangel,
The main issue we had was scaling things up to quantities required for keeping the car's fuel tank full. It's one thing to produce a few liters of moonshine quite another to produce 40 or 50 liters of pure ethanol in your kitchen from fermented tropical fruit every week. Also it was a lot easier to just buy the finished product at the local gas station. It certainly wasn't cost effective to produce it at home. We just did it to see if we could.
Along those lines, it would probably be more efficient to barter for manual labor with schnapps than pouring it into a lawnmower or tractor engine.
sixty pounds of bananas or sweet potatoes will make a gallon to a gallon and a half of E100. It just depends what you're using it for.
Hmmm...that's quite a bit of mass.
@FMagyar: thanks. I suspected it was a scale thing.